The Philanderer's Playbook
"Did y'all see all that? Oh, they blew it up."
Bill Clinton - Booneville, IN - 4/10/08

Does Bill help Hillary or not? Somehow, with this week's milestones, revelations and the manifold declarations of staying the course, it doesn't seem like the most important question.

I wish, for all the hours of testimony, there were a simple answer to what our objective in Iraq might be. Maybe someday.

But you have to hand it to Bill, who pulled out another one from the philanderer's playbook: put something out there which becomes the topic, no matter how ridiculously made up you know it is, so the conversation doesn't go where you don't need it to.

I've worked for country and western 'superstars' who had a girl in each town. It's a mindset I'm familiar with, whether the toys be Harley-Davidsons or El Caminos lined with Astroturf.

There's a prolonged period of spackling 'the truth' following any dangerously close calls at being found out.

"...there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995. And you woulda thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this."

Ironically, the large lying eye of CBS had video, not just runway footage of niceties which didn't appear to include heroics and/or gunfire, but four, count 'em four, usages of this anecdote going back to Christmas time. So now, and here's the crumpled logic, we're talking about whether Bill helps Hillary, instead of getting anywhere near the toxicity of her war authorization.

Many of us had that gut feeling we were going to war when the nation's leadership started addressing the Iraqis like the police commissioner outside the gangland hideaway with a bullhorn.

Then, this week, ABC broke a story confirmed by the AP about a hands on White House, coming up with a tortured legal footing for torture.

The usual infamous suspects are involved. Cheney, Tenet, Powell, Ashcroft, and Rice, in full cabal mode in the situation room, being provided demonstrations, and with the minions like Addington, Gonzales and Yoo serving up dubious workarounds to the law. Quel extraordinaire.

In SAT question form: extraordinary techniques are to torture as workarounds to the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution are to __________ (a) war crimes (b) high crimes and misdemeanors (c) conspiracy (d) all of the above (e) the eagle soaring.

The trail of accountability is working it's way back to the original ginning of the Greatest Story Ever Sold which Frank Rich has delineated.

In this country, we impeach for lying under oath about your wandering lusts. So by what stretch of the imagination is the current crew not susceptible?

Our Iraq policy is a shell game. I characterized it a while back thus: "Since we were teased with 'return on success' you have to wonder how much more success Bush wants to claim. Somebody's bound to make the connection that more than the five thousands troops who were going to be rotated out anyway might make a more appropriate return on so much success. My conclusion is that the surge is working as much as Bush needs it to be working. The coming months he may not need it to be working. Yes, I'm that cynical."

I'm more cynical now than I was November 18th. Now that the fact that the surge is working is the reason that we can't return on success, I don't think anyone can blame me.

But look, over there, a bunny. That's direct from the philanderer's playbook.

We see how it works; we're talking about future success and victory instead of past abject failure. We're talking about if Bill helps Hillary when he goes off like that. We're being asked, again, to follow some tortured logic in criticizing Obama for the way he described the rural Pennsylvanian.

If he erred when he said "And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," it's that he may have confused the right leaning Democrats (who have an opportunity to make amends for putting Reagan, Bush, and Bush in office) with the typical Limbaugh listener who is never going to vote for a Democrat, period. Is that an unfair stereotype? Everyone is so touchy these days.

Besides, I would say, on average, everybody here in rural New Mexico shares three or four of those traits.

The most important thing for Pennsylvanians to consider is that this whole Iraq misadventure began with a house of cards. It succeeded because of the threat to blackball anyone who prevented the war planners from having their absolute way. I recall a Frontline about Dick Cheney where it was revealed that's the kind of arm twisting he was performing at those inexplicable and unprecedented visits to CIA headquarters.

Hillary Clinton chose not to join those like Kennedy and Feingold, who weren't convinced by the conflations, the rapid fire changes in rationale when one proved not so popular, etc.  It was as if Dick Cheney's voice was in her head saying "if you don't give us this authority, then it's a victory for our enemies and the consequences are on your head. Have a nice run for president, senator."

She has desperately tried to morph that vote into an indictment of Bush, that he actually used the authority, rather than of she who gave it. That's as incoherent and negligent as the best hits of Condoleezza Rice. The war is markedly hotter these days and threatening to regain the front page. Which is why she's happy to swoop in and face those rural Pennsylvanians and gin up a case for insult.

You can't win sometimes. Obama showed an empathy and perhaps got it wrong. He can learn. He's a man, not a concept or a product. Cough up one Steve Martin sized "excu-u-u-se me!"

Chip, chip, chip. That bad man tried to paint you as alienated rednecks. I'm your gal. I feel your pain in non-stereotypical ways. Now who wants cake?

Next week: Go Along to Get Along

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